


The obliterated place

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Identity Issues, Insomnia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Prayer, War is hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snow defeated Ravenna and saved her kingdom; she still has a lot to learn about prisons, about wars, about things that remain trapped, even in the wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The obliterated place

 

After the battle, after her people had been addressed and the church officials contacted for her coronation, after she'd wiped off her sword and hung her head, after she'd found Greta up in the tower (the youth slowly sinking back into her bones, her eyes retaining every pattern of the horror she’d experienced), Snow White realized she was avoiding sleep.  

 It was a weighty thing, to kill another person; Snow White wasn't sure she ever would, or should, forget the feel of the huntsman's knife in her hand, and the feel of the huntsman's knife under Ravenna's ribs.  The memory resonated in her skull, her hand ached from the grip she'd had to keep, and Snow thought of her own death, the one Ravenna had died promising her. She did not want to sleep, but she was led to Ravenna's chambers and left with the empty bed and a pile of armor. Snow had forgotten how biddable one became, when one ruled, when one had access to power. She found a bucket and washed, tangling her fingers in her hair until she had dislodged most of the broken glass, and pulled her clothes back on; the textiles were wretched with mud and saltwater and her leathers weren't much better, but Snow's skin crawled at the thought of trying on any of Ravenna's gowns, and she didn’t have anything else that belonged to her.

She prayed, for a while, and crept out of the chamber when the castle noises had reduced in volume; William slept on the stone floor outside her room, his face smudged with dirt and blood, glittering shards of black rock still caught in his hair. She stepped over him, not wanting to wake him; he was young, inescapably so, and needed the rest. She couldn't shake her memory of the forest, of a version of William completely unlike himself--he hadn't really changed, over the years, but the dark look in those eyes that had otherwise resembled his had left a dark blot behind, a sick, moldy taint. She swallowed against the memory of the apple decaying in her throat.

Snow kept her head down and her shoulders hunched high, and no one stopped her as she wandered through the strange halls, relearning the layout of her prison and her home. 

The huntsman was awake when she found him, slumped and blurry at the edges. Snow was sheltered enough that she couldn't tell if it was alcohol or the fade of adrenalin that made him so, until he caught sight of her and beckoned her close. There was a bottle in his grasp, but his eyes were clear; adrenaline, then. She slumped down the wall beside him and he rolled his shoulders back, making a place for her to lean against him. Snow did, and felt a little of the hurt seep out of her bones as she relaxed. He was very warm.  

"We won," she said. 

The huntsman sighed and passed his bottle over; it was mostly full, but the liquor inside was loosing the chill it must have once had. He'd been at the wall a while.  

"That was the easy part," he said. "What's next is the way you come out of the war."  

Snow thought about that--about the years she'd waited and the ground she'd covered, about falling down and waking up--and took a drink from the bottle, because it seemed appropriate. She remembered one of her mother's old lessons: meet your guests where they are, but gracefully. Snow still almost spat the liquor out, because it tasted bitter and strong, but the huntsman caught the look on her face--she couldn't imagine what it must have been--and he laughed. It was a small noise, rough and scraped from somewhere inside his chest, but it surprised her, and warmed her, and she swallowed the stuff down, coughing a little at the pins and needles she felt in her throat at the afterburn. 

"Majesty," he started, saw the look on her face, and then said, "Snow." It wasn't the same as him calling her 'girl,' but it was familiar, when very little felt familiar any more. "Snow, what do you need?" 

Snow thought on that, drinking again to soften the pause. Her belly ached with every swallow, but the drink loosed the rest of her joints. She was a little tired, and still did not want to sleep, least of all in that great empty bed where her father had died.  

"I was in the tower a long time," she said, "and always looking north makes for little knowledge of how the hours pass." Another drink, though after she had swallowed the mouthful, he took the bottle back; Snow didn't protest. "Huntsman," she said, "how long did I sleep?" By this she meant, _how long was I dead_. 

"Until you woke up," he said. "You slept until we needed you."  

"I was afraid," she said, honest and shaken; the bright fight had gone out of her while she’d watched Ravenna crumple under the little weight of the knife in her heart. "I am still afraid." 

The Huntsman sighed at that, and shifted to pull his arm free from under her; Snow didn't move away and found herself pressed closer still to his side, his arm coming up and settling around her shoulders. She waited for him to tell her that the fear would pass, or for him to say that she would eventually be well; but the huntsman hadn't lied to her before, and he didn't seem inclined to begin now.  

"I am a poor choice for comfort," he told her, and she could feel the sound of his speech buzzing in her head, in the places her face was pressed against him. "I have known too many things."  

"I prayed for her," Snow said, though she didn't know why she said it. She thought of Ravenna's face, the way all her stolen years caught up with her. Snow thought of the mirror, covered in Ravenna's dust.  

"She was poison," the huntsman said, without heat. "I am thinking of what Sarah said, when I first came home from the war. The way one is haunted by everything being over."  

"I think she will be with me, all my life," Snow said. "The way her mark will be on my people and our kingdom, for all the lives that come after ours." 

"Being free of her will not make her less real," the huntsman told her. It was exactly what Snow had just been saying. 

He took in a breath, and let it out. Snow let her own inhalations match his. The huntsman’s chest was bigger than her own, his lungs used to a different kind of strain, and she felt dizzy with the stretch of matching the long, slow pattern he set. Snow thought that it was perhaps worrisome, the way she responded to the task of keeping up with him in whatever small way presented itself, as experience had proved even the huntsman’s impressive bulk and skill would not keep her safe. 

Safety was another thing she might as well let go of, she thought. The sense of safety, the hope of comfort—Snow had expected these things as a child, had believed in their natural existence, but it had been years now since she had learned that, like everything in this life, safety and comfort were unreliable and often unavailable.  She had a vague notion that her father would be horrified and ashamed, but Snow had long enough in solitude with only the prayers she remembered from childhood to hope for something better, however unlikely it seemed. 

She stopped trying to match the hunstman’s breathing; he was drowsing a little, despite being propped against a hard stone wall with a bony princess tucked under his arm, and she couldn’t inhale so slowly and then still wait to exhale without actually holding on to her every breath. Snow at once felt at peace and also completely battered, as though the engine of her heart had finally registered whatever bruising force it took to start beating again. 

She still did not want to sleep, but the fear had gone and left her, for now. Snow knew that even if she did manage some rest, things would be exactly the same in the morning, only now she would be queen, and would have different clothes to wear while dealing with them. It didn’t quite seem worth it.  

From her spot on the floor, under the huntsman’s arm, Snow could just see out the edges of a window. It wasn’t quite full dark—it never was, this deep into the half-winter, the sky was always deep gray and flecked with hazy, orange dust—and she could not even pretend to make out the smudge of the woods in the distance. It was a good thing the huntsman had his arm around her, she thought; the thought of the morning to come made her shudder, and the only path that seemed fair was the muddy road leading back into that forest. 

She stayed there, for what felt like hours, until her bones ached from the stone and her shoulder throbbed under the huntsman’s slouching weight. She crept away from him, quiet as she knew how, and wandered until she found the old stairs to the north tower; she climbed them, and found her little room the same as she’d left it. 

Snow curled onto the wretched mattress she’d once been so desperate to leave behind, and waited for dawn, thinking all the while about faith and hope, dead women and scarred women, and all the years she’d have with them even after a crown was placed upon her head. She was learning that prisons came in many shapes, and some were made of ghosts. 


End file.
